US President Donald Trump yesterday formally declared a national emergency to bankroll his border wall by bypassing Congress and averting a second bruising government shutdown. But the move set up a fresh round of clashes with Congress over the constitutionality of his actions and threatened to divide his own party.
His decision to sign a US$333 billion (S$453 billion) border security and spending Bill to keep the government open was announced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor on Thursday and confirmed by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
Soon after, the Senate and House passed the legislation, which includes US$1.37 billion for new fencing along parts of the United States-Mexico border - about a quarter of the US$5.7 billion Mr Trump sought for a concrete wall or steel barriers.
Mr Trump then signed off on the legislation yesterday morning (last night Singapore time).
In a televised announcement, Mr Trump said he was signing the declaration to protect the US from the flow of drugs, criminals and illegal immigrants coming across the southwestern border from Mexico.
The declaration will enable him to divert US$3.6 billion budgeted for military construction projects to the border wall, officials said. He will also use budgetary discretion to tap US$2.5 billion from counter-narcotics programmes and US$600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund. Added with US$1.375 billion authorised for fencing in a spending package passed by Congress, he would have about US$8 billion in all for the wall.
Democrat leaders signalled that they would move to block Mr Trump on his declaration, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling reporters on Thursday they were considering filing a legal challenge.
The Democrats, who control the House, also said they would pass a resolution to end the national emergency, which would force the Republican-controlled Senate to vote on whether to do so. The move would put Republican senators in a bind by forcing them to choose between publicly backing a controversial decision and losing moderate votes at the ballot box while setting a risky precedent, and opposing a president from their party at the cost of his supporters' ire.
Republicans, who had spent the past few weeks advising against declaring an emergency, were publicly divided. Some publicly fretted that the move undermined Congress by going over its head and veered towards presidential overreach. Others backed the President. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said: "I'm not in favour of operating government by national emergency. We have a government that has a Constitution that has a division of power, and revenue raising and spending power was given to Congress."
National emergencies are neither unusual nor always controversial in US politics, and 58 have been declared by presidents since 1976.
Immediate past president Barack Obama declared 13, and since assuming office, Mr Trump has declared three international affairs-related emergencies which slapped sanctions on foreign actors from Myanmar, Russia and Nicaragua.
But Democrats argue that Mr Trump's claims of a humanitarian and national security crisis on the US-Mexico border are false and far from a natural disaster or military situation threatening the US or necessitating a state of emergency. "This is not an emergency, and the President's fear-mongering doesn't make it one," said Ms Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer jointly. "He's trying an end run around Congress in a desperate attempt to put taxpayers on the hook for it. The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities."
A CBS News poll released on Feb 3 and conducted just after the previous shutdown endedfound that 66 per cent of Americans felt Mr Trump should not declare a national emergency to pay for a wall. But 73 per cent of Republicans felt he should.
Declaring a national emergency over a border wall could set an unwelcome precedent for Republicans, warned Ms Pelosi, who said a Democratic president could, for instance, declare an emergency over gun violence and push through policies deeply opposed by Republicans. "The precedent that the President is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans."
The signing of the spending Bill will close a chapter of political brinkmanship, removing the possibility of a second shutdown until the end of the fiscal year on Sept 30.
